


Do Not Go Gentle

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, CARTER Angela - Works, Snow White - All Media Types, Snowdrop (Fairy Tale), The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (Short Story)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Snow White Fusion, Angela Carter references everywhere b/c studied texts, BDSM, Blood, Dylan Thomas references everywhere b/c I am in love, F/F, F/M, Genderswap, Manipulation, Sexual Violence, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Submission, The Snow Child - Angela Carter, but also porn, in world racism, pretentious as hell, when u shamelessly use fic to learn your study texts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-30 20:38:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12660981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: 'She can hear the crashes muffled by the fallen snow.The blade is cool beneath her touch.Do not go gentle into that dark forest.'________________The only heir to the throne came crawling from the trees on sharp fingers and bowed legs. To the kingdom, her black skin, black hair, tell tales of danger.And yet they do not think to fear the forest from whence she came.





	1. a stranger has come [Preface, Part One]

_'Do not go gentle into that good night,_  
_Old age should burn and rave at close of day;_  
_Rage,_ rage _against the dying of the light.'_

 

**\- Dylan Thomas**

* * *

 

**MIDWINTER - INVINCIBLE, IMMACULATE**. Amongst the white drifts of snow, Azriel is an isolated anomaly of black: black hair, black skin, wrapped in the glittering pelts of black foxes; she wears high, shining black boots with even blacker heels.

To the eyes of the servants and courtiers and noblemen populating the gardens around her, her dark figure is but a blemish. Their cool eyes do well in wiping her clean from their minds to restore the beauty of winter. She does not try to meet their gazes. The horizon remains the sole subject of her study.

Looking at her, you would not think her princess, the lone heir to the throne. When they learn of it, all others are quick to be glad their Queen is immortal, her consort invincible. Thank the Wolf Queen, they’ll murmur. Thank The Rats at her paws, The Maggots buried in her fur, thank The Snow Child sleeping in her stomach. They will thank The Ravens, grateful even to their death gods for news that no one such as Azriel shall ever rule the throne.

It is knowing that she is the only possible heir that drives them to give up their children willingly to Her Majesty. Though the annual ritual has never yet worked, their Queen without a child of her own even all these years later, they will keep on sacrificing.

All because they are scared.

They are scared of The Black Girl who came crawling out from The Forest.

Thumbing the hilt of her knife, Azriel cannot blame them, though they are fools. Fools who think her a child of danger for the pigment of her skin, the way she wears night in her eyes even under the glare of the midwinter sun. Fools who even now, as she watches that blurred horizon, fell the trees she once emerged from. She can hear the crashes muffled by the fallen snow.

The blade is cool beneath her touch.

_Do not go gentle into that dark forest._

 


	2. to share my room in the house [Preface, Part Two]

**RHYS THUMBS THE COLLAR AROUND HER NECK.** It is out of place in comparison to her regal finery, the heavy scarlet silk that wraps her breasts. The leather of it is plain, unmarked, tied off tight will dull iron. Though the rest of her attire is tailored like a second skin against her body, its metallic barbs dig into the veins and arteries buried behind the dark flesh of her neck.

Fingers catch her own, pale, white as the freshly driven snow. Where her nails lie shortened for pleasure, this hand wears talons, long and sharp. They are painted the colour of gold, but flecks of crimson spoil the splendor.

The smell of blood is intolerable. Rhys, despite knowing she must not, turns her face away. She tries to find air unsaturated with that rank scent, but the whole room, the whole castle, is thick with it. It marrs her own skin, slicks her hands well past the wrists.

After all, it was she who tore the heart from the child’s body and fed it to her lover.

“Tonight,” her majesty says, cupping Rhys’ jaw as if she were a chalice of fine wine. She drinks from her lips just the same. Licks the red right off of them, though her tongue is stained with it too. “It shall work. I am sure.”

Their mouths are smeared with scarlet. Their bodies, clothed though they may be in luxury, appear savage. There is something of the animal in the way she moves, the curl of her spine, the scratching of her claws. It is not a quality that inspires love, but desire? Desire is there in plenty.

Rhys lets her push her to the floor.

“Together,” Lucien tells her, “we shall create a child.”


	3. not right in the head [Chapter One]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _'Though wise men at their end know dark is right,_   
>  _Because their words had forked no lightning they_   
>  _Do not go gentle into that good night.'_

**DAWN, DARK WITH SNOW CLOUDS**. Riding a mare as black as she, Azriel ventures deeper into the forest. It is the kind of forest mortals do not wander far in, not if they hold hopes of making their return. Animals do prowl here often, but is is not them you ought be wary of. There are some things even monsters fear.

Snow has fallen on snow to ensure all before Azriel is perfect white, especially here, deep in the trees where no loggers dare go. The kindling sun glints off of the crystalline perfection, blinding her a moment.

When her sight returns, there stands a fox before her. Its ginger fur is crusted with flakes of ice, its nose frosted. Despite this winter being a long, harsh one, driving the animals down to their barest numbers, this fox is fat as a summer-swilled pig. Bigger than any she’s ever seen, it wears viscera around its collar like a bib, maw matted with its fleshy feasting.

With yellow eyes it watches her.

Dismounting, she draws and waits to know its movements, to witness if it shall play the role of prey or predator. Her answer is given when the creature lunges for her jugular. She never did like foxes.

Years of solitude dedicated to footwork and ducking and dodging come to her aid; She side-steps its bestial predictability with ease. A turn on the heel and she buries the dagger deep between its ribs, hot fluid gushing across her fingers as it twitches and whimpers. Only once the hunter has fallen still does she withdraw the metal and straighten.

The fox’s orange fire fur, thick flesh, falls upon the snow. She blinks, and it has turned into a hole; this hole is filled with blood, soaking the ivory ground brighter than any colour this forest elsewhere contains. It matches the snow she wipes her weapon upon, sluicing off the crimson she does not care for. Two fingertips touch the puddle; She brings them to her lips. They smell of a perfume she knows well, a taste she is forbidden as she looks back through the naked trees at the castle she is due back to.

Hoisting herself back upon the horse, they ride south, through the pool of scarlet, tracking hoofprints across the snow. The morning drifts will cover the path they leave, but until then, a red ribbon leads the way back home.

 

☾

 

 **SHE IS TO INHERIT WHEN SHE COMES OF AGE.** Whilst Lucien is merely the widow of the dead King, he of royal blood, Azriel is of his flesh, his lineage. It does not matter that he was of yellow hair and daisy skin, where she is ebony made flesh; they had the soothsayers confirm the truth of it. There was little else they could do when she came naked from the trees.

She stands naked again before her cloaked guardian, letting her appraise her. Whenever they come together, always there is a look of hunger about Her Majesty’s eyes. Azriel is not so conceited to think it lust; She knows she is the child the Queen cannot seem to bear. There are secrets scribed beneath her skin, but they are not for this breed of royalty.

Gloved in gold, Lucien runs a finger up her ward’s budding breast, nipple dark as a raven’s feather. “When you went down to the village, what did they say of you?”

“That every day, I look more and more like him.”

“At the market?”

“Each time they see me, they think me made further in his image.”

“The docks?”

“For a moment, they mistook me for my father.”

Shifting, Azriel draws her warm furs close around her, covering her breasts. Lucien shivers, raised hairs glinting in the firelight off of her bare flesh. Her nudity paints her slighter than her gowns. “You’re nothing like him,” she says, voice hard, eyes hard. _He_ watches them from his portrait, hung high above them, presiding over the throne room even now.

“No,” Azriel agrees. “I’m not.”

 

☾

 

 **LUCIEN LIES RETCHING IN HER CHAMBERS**. Rhys watches on, as she always does this time of year. She is not permitted to touch. Not when such things are happening.

Once more blood soaks the floor - there is always so much blood, she does not remember what it is to go without it - but no dead girl accompanies the flood this time. The shoreline of this red sea ebbs back to royalty. Her white satin nightgown blooms rose red, stemming from intimacies between her thighs.

Cupping her stomach, swollen and distended - though not as it once was before - the queen clutches at her chamber pots. She does not look old enough to have done this so many times before. She does not look old enough to suffer any of this, her satin skin not a day over sixteen. Yet those eyes of hers have endured more winters than all save Rhys could possibly imagine.

“My love,” she says, weakening, yearning to go to her aching side. The queen strikes her with one look.

“You’re not him,” she hisses with a tongue of hate and blame. On her knees, all Rhys can do is bow her head and sigh.

“No,” she concedes. “I’m not.”

 

☾

 

 **ONCE UPON A TIME, LUCIEN LOVED A GIRL OF FLOWERS**. White skin, red mouth, black hair, she was the child of all Lucien’s affections. They were both little more than children, really, girls stumbling into womanhood. Stark naked, they played as young girls do; In time, they explored their nakedness as lovers. She loved her furred and she loved her bare.

She loved a girl with lips as red as a rose.

Upon wandering in the gardens, they chanced upon the freshly grown thorn bushes of the castle. Thinking herself romantic, Lucien had pointed out their likeness. Floral imagery once seemed so sweet. When her lover asked to pluck one, she could not deny her, though they belonged to her father, who always was so precious about his property.

So her darling picked a rose, pricked her finger upon a thorn. Lucien could not move as the other bled, screamed, fell. Weeping, she collapsed beside her body, cradling her to her chest even as she melted.

“A life for a life,” her father said, plucking the rose from where it had fallen. Taking her shoulder, he handed it to her. “Now, my jewel, you shall live forever.”

“You won’t become him,” Elain had once assured her on the matter of Beron, her father, when life had still lain beating within her heart.

“No,” Lucien had promised. “I will not.”


	4. a girl [Chapter Two]

**ANOTHER MUST DIE**. With the year’s ritual unsuccessful, the time comes to select the next sacrifice: _A life for a life_. Were winter not eternal upon the land, it would be spring- The golden time for romance, conception, consummation.

It has been winter and never more since The Black Girl came.

A shiver touches Rhys’ spine. She looks on as her lover submerges into a bath of honeyed milk, harvested from the skeletal lambs kept blind down in the dungeons. It is as white as their bones and sweet smelling, nearly enough to overpower the stench of bloodshed that dwells here.

Her Majesty consulted the tarot that morning. Always the same three play out before her: The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Hanged Man. Each time the queen places them square across the table, she smiles. She cradles them to her chest. She takes them as a sign that he is with her, guiding. He who has conceived a child already, though the mystery of its conception pervades.

Rhys watches, and does not think the omen kind. As her lover rises from the liquid, she cannot purge an image from her mind; the woman she loves suspended by the foot, dangling from the willow tree they first made love behind. The tarot did not place the image there; she found her like that the first time they met.

Kneeling, she’d wept for the sight of it. As she did, the ropes around that milk-white ankle had frayed, offering to loose her.

The sight had been made all the more terrible by how the queen had cried out in terror, and begged her - please, _please_ \- to stop.  

Now, she is a statue of calm as she steps free of her snow white lake and paces the alabaster floor. Opposite, a grand circle of mirrored gold hangs suspended in the air. This is the one gift she was allowed to keep from her father, when her marriage took her far away, to lands unknown.

‘ _Mirror mirror, on the wall_

 _Who’s the fairest of them all?_ ’

Pouring from the golden surface, a woman cloaked face and toe emerges. They see no lips to speak when the spectre answers,

‘ _Thou, queen, art fair, and beauteous to see,_

 _But The Black Girl is lovelier far than thee_.’

 

☾

 

 **THE HUNTRESS RIDES IN BY MOONLIGHT.** She is a creature of the dark, black hair, black skin, but she does not scare them like the princess. They look and see the bow armed at her back, the hunt she is forever on, and are comforted. To their small eyes, there is logic in a woman such as her devouring up hot violence.

To the queen she comes, summoned upon the wings of twin doves. She bows low, nose scraping the ground. Wreathed in young snowdrop flowers, the queen sees and smiles.

“How shall I be rid of her? To the forest you shall take her, to gallop off and leave her. As proof of the deed, you shall come bring me back her heart.”

“If exposure fails?”

“Drown her in winter waters.”

“Say she grows gills and swims?”

The Queen does not falter; she hands her a snow white rose. “Prick her finger on the petals,” she says. “And she shall fall down dead.”

 

☾

 

 **SISTERHOOD IS RARE.** Rarer still amongst those unlinked by blood. Yet rare as it may be, Rhys draws into the shadows to her fellow captive’s side. They look to one another, The Black Girl, The Midnight Consort, and words need not be said. They taste important on her tongue though, so she says,

“It’s time.”


	5. mad as birds [Chapter Three]

**SOME HISTORY, THEN.** One from the eyes of her royal highness, ergo the only one that matters.

Not that long ago, a girl whose beauty was preserved eternal in a rose of perfect snow was promised to a man, a man more beautiful than a thousand suns. He glowed from the inside out, and all who looked upon him did love him. A king, he married her and made her queen.

Man and wife did love each other dearly, and frequently, more frequently still, and yet never did she conceive a child. Without an heir to carry on his fading mantle, the Sunshine King rode out into The Forest in search of a flower, one rumoured to produce a potion granting the gift of a child to any who so wished it.

Three nights he stayed, and when he returned, he told a tale most foul.

Deep within the cedar trees, he’d chanced upon a tigress, larger than could truly be believed. With her walked a raven, a bird as large as a wolf, and as he saw the King knew this bird to be the wicked Morrigan, The Raven, goddess of death. Though her sister twin was absent, the King looked and knew that he must run.

But that wicked tigress stopped him in his tracks.

Her stripes filled with tricks and deceit, she laid a curse upon him. When he returned, he bore a mask to hide his shame and hid himself away. He emerged only once more, to seek revenge, riding brave into that forest. Another came this time, the king of a neighbour kingdom who had gifted him his wife. Together those valiant men stormed the trees and creatures, and that tigress they did find.

She they vanquished, and though no flower they did find, the Sunshine King returned instead with something better in his eyes. In his wake he lead The Raven, tamed and enslaved to the body of a woman. Her name was Rhys, sister to The Morrigan, and each full moon she was sacrificed on glistening altars to end the stench of death and bring about new life. When she was reborn, King and Queen mated beneath the moonlight and awaited their promised child.

But the tigress’ curse was clever. No child came, and soon the King died of her blight.

The child, she came some ten years later, crawling from The Forest. Bare black skin and wildling eyes, she claimed her inheritance with certainty. Soothsayers from all the land rode in and begrudgingly confirmed the truth of her foul words.

And so The Black Girl grew up royalty, and so awaits the throne.  

   

☾

 

 **WITH NIGHT AS THEIR COVER, THEY SLIP ACROSS THE COURTYARD.** Here they are in their element, skin, eyes, hair all cousins of the darkness. With ease they bypass detection and glide out to the stables. 

Unleashing her faithful mare, Azriel runs her fingers through the beast’s mane, hushing her. She knows her kindness well and quiets. Rhys touches her shoulder. “Tell her I miss her.”

“I shall.”

“Tell her I’ll leave soon.”

“I won’t lie.”

“Then tell her- tell her I’m sorry and I love her.”

“If you’d like.”

Looking up at The Black Girl mounted upon her mare, Rhys takes her hand and squeezes it gently. “The huntress shall come for you.” Her only answer is a smile, one warm, welcoming. She does not understand it, but then the future never was her calling, but her sister’s. Rhys is bound to suffer the past, over and over, as someone must. It is what ties her here, and what drives her to kiss The Black Girl’s hand. “Take care, my child.”

Azriel looks down at her. “You are not my mother.”

 

☾

 

 **THE MOON HER GUIDE, SHE RIDES**. For years she’s known this night to be coming, and has learned the pathways well. Starving villages sleep poorly, but none break word of the cloaked figure sailing through their midst. It is the right time for it; They are due a stranger come to claim another of their daughters.

Beyond the valley and the rivers, she finds The Forest line. No one waits to greet her. It is only now that her face betrays emotion, a creasing of her dark brow, cold seeping in at the eyes. To their time, she has not been gone so long, yet it is not themselves they face. Humans work all too quickly, as they race against their burning wicks.

Her breast grows tender. It aches, in a way she does not know. Something more is coming.

She rides on further.


	6. bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume [Chapter Four]

**THE HUNTRESS IS A WOMAN OF VIOLENCE.** Or at least, that is how she does appear to others. And who can blame them, for to look upon the swell of her dark muscles is to understand the power of flesh. The metal she wields is paper to her bones. Supple fingers coax a bow to loose arrows that not only hit their mark, but caress it deep into the confines of the flesh to strike the heart. Her language is that of danger and battle and bloodshed, and she is fearsome for it, yet comprehensible. There is no mystery to her majesty.

Under stars and ink she rides across planes of foreign grass. There is a land she misses, but it is forgotten through the years and fires that did consume it. Now she fights for that fire, kneels to kiss the ring.

She does not ride to take a knee.

She rides to know a girl who promises tales of a world lost to time.

The Forest is not a place you enter if you wish ever to return. It does not let you go until it has decided it is done with you. The Huntress, Cassia, trots the length of its entrance in contemplation for a while. Three lengths, back and forth. A fox’s yowl drives her on, penetrating the crisp canopy of foliage that brushes against her mighty shoulders.

She has the body of a hero; Scars intertwine upon her stomach. She left in armour; now, she rides on naked.

Treading deep into the wood, she hears a song, sung by a chorus of distant birds. She heeds their summons, and is rewarded with the sight of a girl swathed all in black, matched by hair and fingers. “Are you to kill me?” The Black Girl asks, horse treading back and forth upon the omnipresent snow.

“Those are my orders.” She smiles.

“Yet that was not the question.”

Looking upon this night made woman, The Huntress lingers. She dismounts. She said she did not come to take the knee, but now she drops down into the snow. “I think I know who you might be,” she tells her target.

“You speak with great uncertainty.”

“It is not the kind of thing one can be certain about.”

She looks up. Black eyes meet black. The violence melts from her bones until she feels as slight as a willow girl. “Then I shall show you,” The Black Girl says, and offers her death a gentle hand.

 

☾

 

 **WINTER CONSUMES**. It is all it has done for all these years, and time only fuels its hunger. Rhys has watched it devour greenery and animals, but has held only eyes for the ravages its wrecked upon her lover.

“You told her,” The Queen says, calm. Not calm. Just quiet.

“You know I had to.”

“Is she the answer?”

“You know I cannot tell you that.”

Smiling in a way that speaks of the waters of rivers and broken branches, Lucien rests her head upon her lover’s shoulder. Her skin, immortal, immaculate, is white as fresh fallen snow and just as cold too. Rhys cups her cheeks and squeezes her hands to warm her, but comes away with a chill and a shiver. She wishes, foolishly, she knew how to help her.

“He would not want her upon the throne.”

“He asked for her.”

“He regretted it the moment it happened.”

“He went out looking for her.”

“He didn’t understand.”

“He was the first to see her.”

The Midnight Consort knows her words are knives carved careful, but the truth is all she can deal in with this woman. It is strange; The Past is her repertoire. So often her vocabulary is plagued with lies, yet here, the disease is truth. It is the curse _he_ placed upon her, when into her home and happiness he came storming.

“Should I have loved her?” Lucien asks, looking up at Rhysand. And how she wishes she could lie.

“Always.”

Her Majesty bows her head. Rhys finds blood leaking from her own breast, the kind she’s tasted on dead foxes for many years now. “You’re wrong,” the queen says. “I never got that choice.”

 

☾

 

 **SILENCE PERVADES THE FOREST**. Despite the crunch of rotted leaves beneath their feet, there is a stillness even their movement cannot corrupt. The Huntress and The Black Girl ride side by side, one’s arm resting upon the other’s mare. If you should question whose, you have not been paying close enough attention.

Moss claims the trees for its own, small creatures burrow here and there, starving and watching for any sign of scavenging, yet still they feel alone to The Huntress. She does not allow herself to believe that they might have company. It is a dream she had beaten from her as a child. Yet she smiles and makes poor jokes to break the quiet, because otherwise she must listen to her thoughts.

The sky grows darker. They ride by moonlight.

And to a house they come. A cottage wrapped in roots and leaves, not so much a cottage but a living, breathing, growing thing. All birdsong seems to come from here, but no cages hang within or out. Here is a gathering of wishes and tales strung out across the centuries. There is fragility about the twisting twigs and branches, but Cassia looks upon it and cannot help but smile.

  
Her blood sings. Her muscles return to swells of power. This is a song of _home_.  


End file.
